


Beached

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Desert Island Fic, F/F, Soulmate AU, but the island is on a deserted planet bc SCIFI, cyborg AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-20 01:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12421971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: Laura and Carmilla are stranded on an island, on a planet, on a sea that will wreak havoc on Laura's cyborg implants.On the plus side, they have a long-overdue conversation.





	Beached

**Author's Note:**

> The soulmate mechanic is this — soulmates see whatever their soulmate has recently written down in the world around them.

The water lapping up on the beach was a beatific shade of chartreuse, but it didn't smell nearly as pleasant. Fumes hovered at the horizon line, a reminder of the shuttle that had brought them down to this rock in the middle of nowhere. Carmilla watched the waves hiss up over the pitted sand, the grey rocks pitting the sand flashing with electric blue light every time the water hit them. The reaction seemed harmless enough to her, but Carmilla wasn’t here to worry about herself.

She knelt, ignoring the way her wrenched knee screamed, and grabbed one of the shining rocks. Back in the stand of trees, something clanged and Laura cursed at it. It was just about typical that the pilot wasn’t dealing well with being on the ground. For all she insisted that she was highly adaptable, she dealt with change about as well as Carmilla had dealt with her mother imprisoning her when she was being difficult. 

Carmilla didn’t entirely blame her. For someone like Laura, change often meant a painful hour fiddling with a malfunctioning implant. 

When the next surge of water crackled up onto the beach, Carmilla dunked her rock under the water. With the rock against Carmilla’s skin, the zap was almost impressive. Carmilla dropped it, fingers numb. The tips of her fingers stung. Dread sunk through her, a thousand times worse than the pain. 

With her other hand, Carmilla fumbled for the rank pins on her throat, and dunked that clenched fist in the water. As she’d thought, the shock was near disabling. Nothing she hadn’t experienced before but this wasn’t about her. 

“Carm!” Laura’s voice was no less strident from half a forest away. There was another clang, a short silence, and then, “Are you done sightseeing? We need to get this repaired!”

_Broken_ , the sand told her, the pitted grey carved into imaginary words. _Warp drive, impulse drive, main EPS relay._

Oh, her mother would have loved this planet. Torture lay just around every corner. 

Laura was still banging away at the shuttle when Carmilla sauntered back in. The edges of her braid was singed, the shoulder of her uniform torn away and bloody, but she was striking as ever. To think Carmilla had decided to vanish when this mission was over — to think that Laura would ever give up.

If only she was safe around Carmilla… Though Carmilla was starting to wonder if Laura would ever be safe around _herself_. 

Laura stopped her work on the warp nacelles to give Carmilla a once over. As the captain of their miniature vessel, she could have claimed it was to check Carmilla's injury status, but her eyes had a bad habit of lingering on Carmilla's lips. This time, though, she zeroed right in on the problem. Of all the times she could have fixed that little quirk...“What’s wrong with your hands?”

“I didn’t bring along moisturizer,” Carmilla said blandly, and bent over the remnants of the EPS relay system. Oh, that was good news. Though the outer casing was irretrievable, the wiring was mostly intact. “Did you-“

“Carm.” Laura made her way over and tried to touch Carmilla’s shoulder. Carmilla ducked away to grab a tool, the space where Laura's hand brushed her burning sweet and hot. “ _Carm_. What happened.”

“Science.” More words were hovering at the edges of Carmilla’s vision, Laura’s damage manifest burned into the rubble. Carmilla couldn’t remember the last time she’d handwritten something — long enough that Laura wouldn’t remember. Shouldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember. “What’s working?”

Laura squinted at her, but turned her hand over to stare at the list scrawled on the back of her hand. Carmilla’s heart skipped a beat, like the fact Laura had written the message on the back of her hand was a step of intimacy too far. Behind her, the rubble faded back into simple rocks. “Not much. I was thinking of checking the beach to see if anything landed over-“

“Don’t.” Carmilla’s fingers spasmed. Laura startled badly, moving her even closer. They were near face to face now, the wrench dangling from Laura’s hand tapping against Carmilla’s uninjured knee. “Stay away from the water, creampuff. I don’t like the looks of it.”

“Yeah, well I don’t like the looks of you!” Laura blushed, fast and furious. “I mean- you’re always so put together even when we just crashed on some planet in the middle of nowhere! On an island!”

Carmilla raised an eyebrow. It, at least, had escaped the fire on landing. “Are you saying I’d look worse if we crashed on the mainland?”

Laura scowled. “I’m _saying_  that I’m going to check the beach. Because it’s water! We still need water to live, if you hadn't noticed, and the scans said it wasn't saltwater.”

“It might not be salt, but this water reacts aggressively to any trisilica particulate.” Carmilla cupped a gentle hand around Laura’s ear, the hardware heated under her palm. It was the only excuse she had to touch Laura. The other girl didn’t pull away, her breath soft against Carmilla’s cheek. “Listen, cutie, I’d rather not be stuck here with your corpse.”

At that, Laura pulled away, her own hand fluttering to her auditory implant. It wasn’t something she thought about much, she’d told Carmilla once. That was only a half truth. When she did think of it, it was all consuming. It was still disorienting for her some mornings, to wake and to hear the clicks of the vents in the shuttle, to hear Carmilla singing to herself in the cockpit where nobody with average hearing would have been able to listen in.

“We have work to do.” Carmilla pushed aside the pain, the stiffness, the way her heart ached, and started stripping the wires. Laura watched her for a moment, sporting the kind of silence that meant she was watching, but after another moment she drifted away.

Even here, even alone, Carmilla didn’t know what to do about them.

* * *

“Do you think our soulmates will come for us?”

Carmilla stared at the stars, at the constellations lazily weaving themselves into another list. _Ways out_ , they read. Carmilla closed her eyes before she had to see any more. “You still believe in that, cupcake? All that is written is read?”

Laura’s hand found hers, grit and grease and burnt engine held between them. “I’ve seen it,” she said, voice far away. “When I was a kid. She only wrote one thing, wherever she was.”

Carmilla opened her eyes to see Laura watching her, her hair loose against the ground, the ends curled into _there isn’t a way out. Am I going to die here?_   _Kelenis sector, third planet, fourth-_ “Let me out, I said,” Carmilla whispered, and there, in the sand, holding onto Laura with all her might, it felt like she’d finally found that freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> Check me out at writerproblem193.tumblr.com to request a minific of your own! This one was from an anon, but ended up too long to put in the regular compilation. 
> 
> And yes, I grabbed some technobabble from Star Trek. So sue me.


End file.
